The present invention relates to the operations for mounting and removing wheels of motor vehicles in general on machines provided with a rotating horizontal shaft on which said wheels are meant to be locked.
A typical example of such machines is constituted by wheel balancing machines, which have a cantilevered horizontal shaft on which the wheel to be balanced is fitted and appropriately locked.
With particular reference to these balancing machines, the mounting and removal operations are usually performed manually and this is particularly awkward when dealing with relatively heavy wheels.
In fact the shaft of the balancing machine is spaced from the ground by an extent which is greater than the radius of the wheel, which must therefore be lifted in order to align it axially with said shaft and fit it thereon.
Obviously, these awkward operations are particularly tiring or demanding when they must be performed repeatedly and at short intervals, as often occurs.
Furthermore, a requirement of recent statutory provisions, not only at the national level, on the issues of workplace safety and worker health is that workers who are assigned to relatively tiring duties must not be forced to perform excessive and prolonged efforts.
Hence the need for means which are adapted to meet said statutory provisions.
Furthermore, in an attempt to obviate the above, devices have been proposed which comprise a platform on which the wheel to be balanced is mounted; said platform is adapted to slide in a vertical direction under the actuation of adapted means, for example a jack with multiple telescopic elements.
However, this approach has proved to be unsatisfactory, both because the alignment between the axis of the wheel and the balancing shaft is not automatic and often requires multiple actuations of the jack and is therefore unsuitably time-consuming, and because said alignment is not precise and this usually entails, as occurs during manual mounting, undesirable friction between the metal wheel and the balancing shaft, with consequent possible inaccurate measurements.